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Pet food formulation lessons
from feeding sled dog champs
Fueling sled dogs as they
race taught Tim Hunt,
DVM, key lessons in
pet food formulation.
TIM WALL
Fueling sled dogs as they race through 1,000
miles of frigid tundra taught Tim Hunt, DVM, key
lessons in pet food formulation that he uses when
making his eponymous brand, Dr. Tim's Premium
All-Natural Pet Food.
"My nutrition background stems from working
with racing sled dogs, which began in 1995," Hunt
told Petfood Industry.
"Learning how these
amazing athletes need
to be fed in order to
complete their events in
prime shape has driven
Specialty trend: probiotics,
prebiotics in pet food,
our company forward.
www.PetfoodIndustry.com/articles/6053
We have learned how to
assimilate the same logic
of feeding those dogs
down different activity levels, all the way from
uber-athletes to couch potatoes.
"I see a diet as being a 100-piece orchestra,
analogous to 100 percent of a diet," said
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more:
Photo by Beate Rhomberg
Hunt. "Fiber composition, fat types and amounts,
digestibility of ingredients, amount of ash,
vitamins, low carbohydrate and being primarily
composed with proteins of animal origin are all
important pieces of this 'orchestra' of a diet. A
highly active dog needs all the nutrients to fulfill
a function, be relatively rapidly digestable and be
palatable when the dog is tired. No one instrument is the key but all in unison make that song
sound just right."
Iditarod sled dog champs ate
experimental formula
The winner of this year's Iditarod Trail dog
sled race, Mitch Seavey, finished the track in
record time at 8 days, 3 hours, 40 minutes and
13 seconds. Seavey fed his working canines Dr.
Tim's Fusion Ultra Athletic Formula, which was
under testing at the time, supplemented with raw
meat and fish. Other sled dog teams ate Dr. Tim's
Momentum dog food formulation.
June 2017
Industry

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